An Abuse of Trust

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find disturbing.

-NEWS REPORTS:

-'A former boarding school head

'has been sentenced to 21 years in prison...'

'The attacks happened between 1978 and 1983...'

'..abused physically and sexually some of the boys in his care...'

To his pupils, Derek Slade was an evil monster who

repeatedly beat them and subjected them to sadistic sexual abuse.

Back in 1982 we exposed some of this predatory pervert's activities

in a BBC Radio 4 Checkpoint programme.

'Whilst checking the dormitories after lights-out,

'I frequently noticed boys missing from their beds.'

But it took nearly 30 years for the full horror of Slade's history

of sexual abuse to come to light and for him to be convicted

on numerous counts of indecent assault and buggery on boys as young as eight.

In the interim, he went on to steal the identity of a long dead boy in order to conceal his past.

And he used that new identity to gain access to some of the most vulnerable children in the world.

So, how many of you were beaten?

I think we feel very pissed off by what this man was up to.

So, how was he able to do it?

How did he manage to escape justice for so long?

And what finally brought him down?

We've come to Suffolk.

It's here where we first came across Derek Slade 29 years ago.

It's where many of the 300 or so pupils in his care became his victims.

We're on our way to meet two of them.

Men now almost 40, whose courage and persistence was instrumental

in bringing him to justice.

They've agreed to meet us at the school where they were abused

at Great Finborough, near Stowmarket in Suffolk.

And that's where Checkpoint first exposed this appalling story all those years ago.

'Some people were made to sort of swap clothes or take all their clothes off.'

'The whole of his backside was covered in bruises of every colour.'

The revelations of Slade's harsh and violent regime at St George's

made national headlines

as newspapers followed our lead in reporting them.

Slade denied the allegations, claiming that the press

were out to get him and, for a while, he hung on to his post.

I just don't believe it.

I feel that a great deal has been overstated

and very substantially overstated.

But it wasn't.

This is where the abuse took place, St George's.

It's now called Finborough School.

And though it's still owned by the same company,

it's now under different management.

Mike Parker was 10 years old when he was first sent here.

Only now can he bring himself to talk about it.

Within 72 hours of being at the school

I basically had the shit kicked out of me by Derek Slade.

What did he do?

He just went ballistic. I'd been called to his office and he just laced into me.

-I had no idea at all why he was doing it.

-And now?

Now, with hindsight, I believe it was all part

of the regime of him breaking me for things that were to come.

-And what was to come?

-The abuse.

Wayne Makin was in the same year as Mike.

First time he told me to take my trousers and pants down, I was like, "What?"

But you didn't argue.

Because you soon learnt that if you didn't do as you were told,

just wind your neck in, get your head down and get on with it,

then it just gets worse.

-You were being conditioned, really?

-Yeah, basically.

Conditioned for the real horrors that were to come

and for secret midnight feasts at Slade's house.

What happened there?

We were entered into the dining room and we was to stand

against the back wall and serve the five gentlemen who were already there.

And when they'd finished drinking and eating, one by one,

the gentlemen would approach one of the children

and touch him on the shoulder and move to another part of the house.

I can remember going to the feasts and being taken off with a man.

But I was given something to drink

and I can't remember anything that happened to me.

But I know something did happen to me.

But whether I've buried it so deep, cos it was so traumatic or...

You know, that's the only thing.

Maybe it's a good thing that I can't remember

because it's hard enough as it is, bringing all this up again.

When you were selected, what happened?

Some people would probably say that I was raped.

But I was so mentally submissive

that it was almost

like I allowed it to happen.

There was nothing I could do about it.

The beatings would come afterwards if I didn't comply.

What's it done to your life?

Basically, just ruined it.

I tried to commit suicide within six months of leaving the school.

And I wasn't really... I was totally on a self-destroy.

I'm a loner.

Several failed relationships.

I've tried time and time again.

And it's just been

a continuous barrage of problem, after problem, after problem.

Slade abused scores of boys at St George's

and ruined at least as many lives.

He was forced to resign.

But it wasn't long before he'd set up another school, this time in Sussex.

And, a few years later, he was back in the news again.

'Derek Slade, the headmaster of the Dalesdown private school in Sussex,

'on the left in this picture,

'has been sentenced to three months imprisonment at Chichester Crown Court.'

'In both cases, the court heard the boys were taken to a private room, the door was locked,

'the curtains were drawn they were ordered to remove their trousers and underclothes.

'Then the head administered six blows so severe that the markings were clearly visible days later.'

'The court was told that Mr Slade's career in education was finished beyond all doubt.'

But it wasn't.

He wasn't even banned from teaching, though his conviction stood.

Slade's sentence was reduced

to a conditional discharge by an appeal court judge

who described his crimes as "lapses of an isolated nature."

Although the trial judge had called his assaults "sickening."

But as our six month long investigation will show,

Slade would go on to abuse more children in India and Africa,

by exploiting those he knew in high places.

The most significant of these was Derek Sawyer.

He became an important factor in Slade's future employment in schools.

He'd been a character witness for Slade in the Dalesdown trial, telling the court

Slade was a well-liked teacher who believed corporal punishment

was an effective aid to discipline.

Mr Sawyer was an important figure in the Labour Party,

elected as a councillor in the London borough of Islington in 1982.

Here he is on Kilroy, arguing for more police accountability.

How can we have confidence in a police force that can't even find out

if one of their own men had done something?

He went on to become Party Secretary

and then Leader of the Council for six years from 1992.

In that position, he oversaw the official inquiry into a paedophile ring

which had infiltrated all 12 of the council's children's homes.

More recently, Mr Sawyer took up key positions

on bodies running London's police, magistrates and probation services.

Mr Sawyer didn't want to be interviewed.

But, through his lawyer, he says that the Schools' Inspectorate didn't find evidence at St George's

to support the claims made in the Checkpoint programme.

He wasn't to know, of course, that the Inspectorate had failed

to properly investigate our evidence by not interviewing key witnesses.

And some of the pupils they did interview

had been told what to say by Slade.

He also says he didn't know that Slade could not be trusted with children

because he wasn't charged with any sexual offences at Dalesdown.

He adds that he was convinced that the allegations of excessive use of corporal punishment at Dalesdown

were exaggerated, and he doesn't agree with corporal punishment himself.

But how close were these two men?

And should Mr Sawyer have known that his controversial friend's

previous use of excessive corporal punishment

could pose a risk to children?

Our investigation has revealed

that the two of them had been friends for more than 40 years.

They'd been at school together in the mid 1960s.

Here's a postcard sent from Mr Sawyer to Slade in 1967.

Slade used to boast that he was the best man at Mr Sawyer's wedding.

Periodically, Mr Sawyer was involved in no fewer than four businesses with Slade.

Perhaps the most significant of these companies was IBEP.

That stands for International British Education Projects.

Motto: "Serving the world's children everywhere."

Slade was a director and Mr Sawyer was the company secretary and chairman.

Slade would go on to exploit IBEP

to gain renewed access to children years after his conviction.

But there was also someone else involved with this company.

Somebody called Edward Marsh.

Described as an eminent educationalist,

Edward Marsh wrote textbooks

which were published by Oriflamme,

another company of which

Derek Slade and Derek Sawyer were co-directors.

But who was Edward Marsh?

At the time of Slade's first criminal conviction, remember,

it was said that it would be difficult, if not impossible for him to teach again.

To solve that problem, he had to reinvent himself.

He had to create another identity.

He came here to Nottingham Road Cemetery in Derby.

And, following a scam described in the thriller The Day Of The Jackal,

he was looking for someone who would have been about his age had he lived.

Somebody he could pretend to be.

And he found what he was looking for on the gravestone of eight-year-old Edward Marsh.

Slade obtained a copy of the dead boy's birth certificate.

Armed with this and a self-certified photo of himself

he successfully applied for a passport in Edward's name.

It was as simple as that.

And as Edward Marsh he was to land a new job

on the other side of the world.

We're in Big Bend, a company town in Swaziland.

In 2000, Slade and Sawyer's company, IBEP,

was awarded the contract to run four schools here.

And who should turn up as IBEP's Director of Education

but a Dr Edward Marsh.

It wasn't just his name that was false.

So was his claim to have a doctorate.

He'd got the job with the help of Mr Sawyer who, as Chairman of IBEP,

submitted this glowing endorsement for Edward Marsh.

Mr Sawyer says he gave an accurate recommendation in good faith,

which did not refer to the doctorate,

and that his role didn't give Slade direct contact with children.

He also says Slade told him

he'd legally changed his name to Edward Marsh by deed poll.

But it remains to be explained why both names,

Derek Slade and Edward Marsh,

continued side by side on IBEP's company paperwork.

The schools were founded and funded by Ubombo Sugar,

the largest local employer

and now a subsidiary of Associated British Foods.

Slade lived behind these gates at the Ubombo Sugar guest house.

It's outside the town in isolated farmland.

He was often seen by locals driving young Swazi boys

to and from his lodgings after school hours.

There was absolutely no reason for him to be bombing down the dirt road

with all these young boys in his car.

And it really did raise the alarm bells for me.

As a parent, Kathy Hughes wasn't the only one worried

about inappropriate behaviour by Slade.

So too was the sugar company's Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tim Nunn.

Inside the medical consultation

I saw four or five children who alleged abuse.

The allegations of abuse were mainly physical and sexual in nature,

fondling and excessive corporal punishment.

Though he believed these allegations, Dr Nunn didn't report them to Ubombo or even the police.

He says he was constrained by patient confidentiality.

If he had been able to report them,

Slade might have been caught there and then.

Slade had contrived to gain access to children once more,

but he was about to make a crucial mistake.

He issued this new rule book for the school.

It said that as Director of Education

he would be allowed to beat pupils at his discretion -

a reminder that that this particular leopard hadn't changed its spots.

The school had never used corporal punishment before

and there was outrage among parents and teachers.

It all came to a head at a parents' meeting at Sisekelo.

We're told that Derek Sawyer was there

and heard the concerns of parents.

But Mr Sawyer says he wasn't at this particular meeting,

he wasn't aware of the rule book,

didn't know that Slade had access to children

or that there were any concerns

about his inappropriate behaviour towards them.

Although he'd changed his name, Slade couldn't change his nature.

Just six months after he got the job in Swaziland he was asked to leave.

And when he did, no-one there had any idea of his past or his real identity.

The reason for Marsh's dismissal

was his management incompetence and abrasive style.

But Slade still craved access to children.

What he did next would show how far he would go.

In January 2001 a massive earthquake struck the Indian State of Gujarat,

killing 20,000 people and leaving 200,000 homeless.

British charities soon began raising money to help the victims.

Slade saw his chance and used IBEP and his contacts

to exploit the situation.

This is the village of Nana Layja.

It was completely destroyed by the quake but has now been rebuilt

thanks to the Leicester Gujarat Earthquake Relief Fund.

Keen to ride a wave of public sympathy, Derek Slade,

in his original name,

approached the earthquake fund offering to set up a school

for the many children orphaned by the disaster.

He twice met trustees of the fund to pitch his proposal.

Although this wasn't an IBEP project, he brought along

his old friend Derek Sawyer,

Chairman of IBEP, to one of those meetings.

The trustees say they were bowled over.

Derek Slade and Derek Sawyer came to the offices.

I think it was very, very impressive

in terms of the portfolio that was brought in,

the work around Africa,

the 16...or 8-year work they'd done in India.

Derek Slater had, in particular.

And the articulation in terms of heading up such an establishment,

it was an ideal opportunity for us to be able to see that somebody

would be able to manage our project in India.

But should Mr Sawyer, by his presence, have lent support

to Slade's pitch to the earthquake fund

and not told them about his past?

By now you'd think that alarm bells might have been ringing for Mr Sawyer.

There was the Radio 4 Checkpoint programme

and Slade's conviction in Sussex.

And then there was the row at Sisekelo over his attempt to authorise corporal punishment.

So, what did Slade really do with the £85,000 generously donated

by the good people of Leicester? We've come to find out.

This is the school Slade built.

It's nowhere near Nana Layja but miles away on this completely

isolated stretch of scrubland, far away from prying eyes.

None of Slade's 70 pupils are here any more.

But it didn't take long for us to track some of them down

at a religious school in a neighbouring town.

So, how many of you were beaten by Slade?

All of you?

-TRANSLATION:

-He hit me with the stick, other times with his hands.

-TRANSLATION:

-He used to beat us every Sunday.

He used to beat us, then take photos, then offer chocolate.

He'd rub you afterwards and say nothing had happened.

And such is the shame of male sexual abuse in rural India

that none of the boys would go into further detail.

But their carers are certain they were abused.

None of the boys we found were orphans of the earthquake

as Slade had claimed.

Instead, they came from the remote and impoverished village of Bhagadya

where the largely illiterate locals had jumped at the chance

to have their sons educated for free.

But when we told them what Slade had really been up to,

they were dumbfounded.

TRANSLATION: We still cannot believe that any teacher could do this.

This kind of thing is unheard of in India.

And if it is true, then our village and our children have been betrayed.

For five years, Slade ran this school unhindered.

But in 2008 he suddenly left.

We're told someone had caught him beating a child

and had reported him to the local police.

Some of the possessions he left behind in his locked bedroom

indicate just how quickly he'd departed.

The door may have been locked, but the window was open.

And on a table just inside

we found three of Slade's instruments of punishment.

One, this cane, and two of these so-called Jokari bats.

One made from hard rubber, the other from hard wood.

The other significant thing about this bedroom

is that the boys' dormitories are right next door.

But while Slade was still headmaster here,

he made another crucial mistake -

one that would ultimately lead to his arrest in 2010.

Signing himself Edward Marsh, he wrote a letter in 2005

to Derrick Pereira - the UK chairman of the charity Help A Poor Child.

In it, he suggests meeting up to discuss working together on another project.

According to Mr Pereira the meeting duly took place,

with Slade's friend and sometime business partner Derek Sawyer in attendance,

here at Mr Sawyer's North London home.

It was supposed to be an opportunity to meet the eminent educationalist and philanthropist Dr Edward Marsh.

Mr Pereira says he was hugely impressed.

But halfway through the meeting

there appeared to be some confusion over names.

Derek Sawyer referred to Edward Marsh as Derek Slade.

I was confused by this and asked what this was about.

And they said it was a pseudonym he was using

as part of a best-selling book they'd written a little while ago.

We couldn't trace the best-seller to which Mr Pereira refers.

But we did find another rather unsuccessful book

published by their company Oriflamme, in 1985.

And this is it.

It's a children's book, and a pretty bloodthirsty one at that.

But it wasn't written by Edward Marsh.

It was penned by someone called Derek Sawde.

That's a combination of both men's names, and it's dedicated to both their parents.

Mr Sawyer didn't want to comment about the book.

He also says the meeting with Derek Pereira

didn't take place as described.

Despite the confusion over names, Derrick Pereira was persuaded

by Slade to give him £18,000 of the charity's funds.

He also made him its representative in India.

But a year later he received an alarming email

from a former pupil at St George's

who'd seen this information on the charity's website.

What did this ex-pupil tell you?

That we had to be very careful because we were dealing with a man who had previously

abused children at St George's School back in the '70s.

Naturally we were appalled by what we heard,

so we informed our branches in India

to investigate further into Derek Slade and the affairs of the school.

Soon afterwards, the charity issued

this carefully worded statement on its website.

We were withdrawing all of our support, disassociating ourselves from Derek Slade

and we were looking to recover our funds and to safeguard the children that were under his care.

Carefully worded the statement may have been,

but the posting still had an impact.

It was seen by another organisation on the other side of the world.

The Sisekelo High School in Swaziland got in touch,

asking what the charity knew about a Dr Edward Marsh.

When they heard what we had to tell them, they dropped the phone.

They couldn't believe what they were hearing,

in particular that Edward Marsh and Derek Slade was the same person.

Of course when we heard what they had to tell us, we were appalled about what had gone on in Swaziland.

Years after we'd exposed this man's harsh

and violent regime at St George's, he was still involved with children.

And despite being convicted in 1986 of causing actual bodily harm to two pupils in his care,

he'd still managed to gain access to children in Africa and India,

where the appalling abuse continued.

But what was it that finally brought him down?

For Mike Parker, 26 years on,

the nightmare of St George's had returned.

I just woke up screaming, shouting and balling.

I then realised I'd wet myself.

38 years old,

it just doesn't happen.

I came into the living room

and just grabbed a ream of paper and just started writing.

He made contact with some of Slade's other victims from St George's

through Facebook, and they took their testimonies to the police.

I was duty bound. I had a job to do.

And as far as I was concerned,

because I hadn't spoken out previously, that man hadn't been stopped.

I couldn't believe he was still involved with children.

Some of the stuff I was reading on the internet clearly showed

that he was still involved in what he'd been doing previously.

Their evidence was collated and in what became something of a perfect storm on three continents,

the Suffolk police began an investigation that eventually led to Slade's arrest.

Here at Slade's house in Burton-on-Trent,

police found 70,000 images of children,

some from India, some from Africa.

4,500 of them were deemed to be obscene.

They also recovered audio tapes of boys being beaten,

boxes of highly explicit material

and detailed diaries of punishments inflicted at St George's

written in ancient Greek.

Evidence from Swaziland and India,

together with heart-rending testimony from numerous victims

of his reign of terror at St George's

finally led to Slade's conviction and a 21-year sentence.

Slade clearly exploited his friendship with Derek Sawyer,

a man prominent in public life.

He'd been leader of Islington Council, chairman of the London Courts Board

and director of the crime prevention charity Catch 22.

Just the sort of man, you might think,

who ought to have made it his business

to ask more questions about his controversial friend.

But it seems he did not.

Mr Sawyer, didn't want to talk to us, remember.

Instead, as his lawyers say in the short statement issued on his behalf,

their client was kept in ignorance by Mr Slade.

It seems our radio programme of 30 years ago uncovered the tip of a substantial iceberg.

As we've discovered, Derek Slade himself went on to abuse

countless more children on two more continents.

His conviction prompted the police to open a new investigation.

And for Mike Parker, too, the quest for justice goes on.

There's no way on God's good earth

that I can now sit back and say, "Hey, I'm happy."

The police have only taken this so far.

They've got so much more work to do.

And I will not let up.

I can't. This has now become my life.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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